


Futurisms

by roseandtiger



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Confessions, Erwin and Levi sitting in a tree, M/M, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 05:41:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandtiger/pseuds/roseandtiger
Summary: It was all that bitch’s fault back in Sina.Levi and Erwin are now stuck in a tree.





	

_One of these mornings_  
_It won’t be very long,_  
_they will look for me,_

_and I’ll be gone..._

 

It was all that bitch’s fault back in Sina. From the rain to the wet muck squelching beneath his boots, to the entrails of their broken horses that send them slipping in mud, blood and slime. And here they were now, sitting ducks as the sky dumped water on them in sheets. Fucking Erwin. He had to give her the fucking time of day.

Levi had just enough time to launch himself into the trees before the dumb, ugly head of the four-meter that had been trailing him made it over the hill. He didn’t go quite where he wanted, in fact, Levi smacked into a tree and hit enough branches that he knew from sound alone that he wouldn’t be getting out again via maneuver gear. A look over his shoulder confirmed it.

He climbed.

Two brand spanking new recruits had come with him and Erwin to the capital. He looked for them now, knowing they too had made for the trees, and spotted them huddled together on a branch a little over fifty meters away. Truthfully, Levi could only see them when they waved and shook the branches to indicate their position. He waved back and signaled for them to stop and stay put. They looked high enough to avoid being swatted like flies so Levi turned his eyes back to the ground below and tried to peer through the trees for signs of their thrice damned Commander. He blinked water out of his eyes. The rain blurred everything, stole the colour out of everything, and Erwin was nowhere to be seen in the greyness, even though he was supposed to have been just behind them.

It was at his word that Levi had moved ahead with the recruits when two Abnormals had come barreling out of nowhere, hidden in a thick mist that had descended suddenly in so rapid a change of weather, that Levi would have said it was conjured if he didn’t know better. He was soaked right through. His clothes stuck to his skin and where the straps tightened, the skin was rubbed raw. The cloak at this point was just added weight, so Levi unclasped it and threw it on a near branch.

“Come on, you big fucking giant,” he muttered, still frantically scanning the trees for movement. Three titans roamed a ways ahead of the line of trees that Levi had climbed. There was one more close to the new guys, but it didn’t seem to have made the connection between their fresh meat and the trees yet. Big dumb things never had much reason to look up he supposed. If they sat still enough maybe the goddamn things would get bored and shuffle off back to wherever they went when they were not eating humans. Worse came to worst and they went after the recruits, Levi could drop on them and draw them away, but he wouldn’t chance a preemptive charge in his condition. There was little he could do except hack at their heels anyway, he wasn’t anywhere near four meters tall or even halfway there. Maybe if they came directly under him so that he could cut them in his down spiral, but after that there’d still be little he could do with no gear.

He pressed his hand against his ribs where pain lanced sharp through his chest. He hissed and in doing so almost missed the soft thud behind him. He started, turned; felt relief wash over in waves, from his sternum to the tip of his fingers.

“About time. Did you stop for some afternoon tea on the way?” he asked the other man now that he was back and whole and Levi wasn’t close to tearing out his own hair anymore. Erwin still wore his cloak, though it seemed he had wrung it out because it wasn’t dripping like his.

“What’s the status here?” Erwin asked, no preamble.  
“Newbies are stuck in the trees down there,” Levi pointed, “and about three four to five-meters walking around in circles over there.”

Erwin jumped to land on the same branch as Levi, and came to stand right next to him, their shoulders touching. The branch shook, leaves whispering underfoot. One of the titans stirred.

“If this breaks, I’m pushing you down his gullet first.” Erwin would deserve it too, for Levi’s jackhammer heart and the dread coiling in his stomach so tight it would likely not unwind until they sat across from one another to put the day on paper, where it was safe to be closed and filed away.

Erwin crouched to better examine the scene below. Levi let him while wishing Mike were with them, or Hanji. One of them would have come up with something. When Levi had had enough of the silence, he nudged the other with his boot. “What?”

Erwin shook his head. “We can’t chance it. There are two horses left, but they’re beyond the tree line back where I came from on open ground” he whispered.

Levi whirled on him, face thunderous. If his eyes could cut same as his hands, Erwin would not have to worry about the titans. “You mean to tell me you had a way of getting the fuck out of here but you turned around and swung back like an idiot?”

Levi could have throttled him. It would be silent, wouldn’t even alert the titans. He could use both his hands and wring Erwin’s neck, who for his part didn’t seem to understand the look Levi was giving him based on the way his ridiculous eyebrows were almost touching on his forehead.

“I figured in the worst case scenario, I could lead them off while the rest of you make away” he added.

Of course he’d figured that. Levi cursed his luck and cursed the day and most importantly, cursed the woman who’d charmed Erwin into taking time out to humour a lunatic and her lunatic beliefs. You’ll see, she’d said. My mother before me and her mother, and all our mothers all the way back to the founding of the Walls had had the gift. Levi had rolled his eyes then as he rolled them now, and been about to tell her to fuck right off, but Erwin had smiled, and she’d smiled at Erwin, and Erwin had turned to him and said “what’s the harm, Levi?”

Levi wiped his eyes with a dripping wet sleeve that did nothing.

“That your brilliant plan, Erwin? Your fourteen-dimensional chess game? Does the rest of it perhaps involve making Bundt there your replacement?” Levi could still make out Bundt’s red mop if he squinted. On second thought, it might have been Bundt’s shaking knees that shook the branches before.

Erwin sort of chuckled. “Sacrifice is demanded of all of us, Levi. Even the King.”

“Uhuh”, Levi said while his eyes traced the movements of the titans. They did not seem to be going away, as if the blood and viscera of the horses reminded them enough of humans that they stayed, hoping some would spontaneously appear. The alternative was that somehow they knew the humans were still there, hidden. “Last I checked, sacrificing the King is precisely how you lose at chess.”

“And losing my best soldier factors in exactly none of my plans.” Erwin said right back.

“And who made you king anyway?” Levi added, to keep up appearances if nothing else. Pass some of the damn time and work off some of the adrenaline.

“You just did.”  
  
“Horseshit.”  
  
“How’s your chest?” Erwin asked, switching gears.

He would live. “It’s the gear that’s busted actually.”

“Gear can be replaced,” Erwin said, as if he had not dragged Levi to a million funding trips and ceremonies and galas of all kinds that precisely demonstrated how money made them all dance like puppets. Whole lives made and ended for it, easy as traced words disappear in breath-fogged windows.

They fell into a silence after that during which neither of them spoke. Levi bit his tongue to resist a few choice words about money and riches and the king. Now was not the time. The rain showed no sign of stopping, it came down steadily, filling the forest with whispers, and if he looked away from the lumbering beasts moving to a fro like confused cows, he could almost persuade himself to think he wasn’t hiding in a tree from giant cannibals. This could be ordinary rain on an ordinary day in an ordinary world. Above, storm clouds tumbled across the sky pushed by the wind. They swelled up, and collapsed in a rhythm all of their own. What did they care?

It looked the same; rain here, cowering in the foliage, and rain up high, on the edge of the Walls. Without looking down, he might never know where he was. The King in his fortress looked at the same sky as the man crushed beneath the titans. And how was that possible, Levi thought, when they might as well live in different worlds entirely? How did the world stand by so unaffected by it all day in and day out? Squirrels darted through trees, birds flew, deer leapt, cows mooed -- hell all creation just fucking went on merrily like nothing was happening. Maybe one day they could look straight ahead and see the horizon. Erwin believed it.

Levi...well, he believed Erwin at least.

There was a vibration starting somewhere deep in his bones, growing stronger as it radiated outward. He was struck by the need to move, let loose his wires and hurl himself up as high as he could go, until he could fling his arm out and touch the clouds to feel what they were made of.

He wondered briefly what Erwin might think of them, but when he let his eyes come down again, Erwin was still squatting with his gaze fixed on the titans. Not the time for dumb questions then.

“Think we’ll be here long?” he asked instead.

“Either Mike or Hanji will be getting antsy by now. Doubtless they’ve seen the flair.”

That task had fallen to the new guy, Bundt, who’d recklessly ran back for his flair gun when his horse went down. He’d fired it and then waited there, the idiot, breathless as if he’d expected a cavalry to come galloping out of the mist to save them all. Erwin had pulled him out at the last minute. Then Levi had screamed at him for not keeping the gun on his person to begin with. At least no one had died. “But,” Erwin added, “we may have to spend the night. It’s getting darker and visibility is shot.”

“We’ll catch our fucking deaths out here.” Levi was openly shivering now. A cold wind had started blowing in from the east. It hadn’t been too bad at first, but it had gotten stronger because why not add insult to injury? A gust of it assaulted them again, even colder than before.

Erwin stood at that to reach back one handed and catch Levi’s cloak, which Levi had discarded for being useless. He twisted it in his hands until it was snake thin, and then he wrung out the water before he moved to wrap it around him. “How’s this going to help?” said Levi. “It’s wet.”

“You’re too visible in white.” Erwin said as explanation with his hands on Levi’s chest, fastening the clasp. When he was done, he spread open his palms and pressed down, drawing a full-body shiver and a hiss of pain from Levi.

“I’m fine” he insisted, swatting Erwin’s hands away, but Erwin merely stretched his colossal arms, enfolded Levi and spun him right around so that for a fraction of a second Levi thought he might actually fall, but then his back came to rest flush against the other man’s chest and Erwin’s arms closed in around him, trapping his shivering frame.

“What are you doing, stupid?” was his first reaction. Even now, with Erwin who had more leniency than anyone, whose closeness Levi’s body did not protest, some things from his past remained. Behind him, Erwin’s chest expanded; when he exhaled hot breath fell on Levi’s neck and left goosebumps in its wake. Levi squirmed, trying to wiggle out of his grasp.

“Stop being difficult, Levi, your teeth are one minute away from chattering right out of your mouth. You’ll soon attract all the titans to us.”

Levi clenched his teeth to keep them from doing exactly that. Because he was a good soldier. If Erwin was to be believed maybe even a great one. Erwin was warm after all. Levi merely needed to figure out where to rest his own hands, which were awkwardly hovering over the ones twined ‘round his middle.

“You know the newbies can see us, right?”

Erwin snorted, which when he did it was less a snort and more a loud exhale. “I would be very impressed if they could spot us with our cloaks on, in the trees, while it’s pouring like this. We might even think to permanently put them on watch.” Levi instinctively tugged his hood down even more. “And what would they see, Levi?”

Oh, fuck him, pretending he didn’t know anything about that. Levi told him as much.

“About what?” Erwin asked, and sounded sincere enough that Levi turned in his arms to look him in the face, eyes narrowed to two steely slits below his brow.

Erwin cocked his head in challenge and wet hair fell to obscure his eyes, sending rivulets of water running down his face. Rainwater dripped from the lip of his hood down onto his collarbone. There was a line of white just visible above it which Levi’s eyes knew to find at once -- a wink of scar tissue put there by Levi. That person seemed lifetimes away from the man Erwin held now. He tried not to think of bloodied bodies, parts strewn on the grass.

Levi swallowed. “Never mind. Maybe you’ll live long enough to ask your psychic girlfriend about it later.”

Erwin, the bastard, only grinned back like a creep. “Ah, my psychic girlfriend. She said I would die a painful death, actually. Did she tell you the same?”

“And for that you paid her? I could have told you that.”

In truth, however, Levi had thought she’d sold Erwin a story similar to his own. Maybe that he would triumph over his adversaries and come back through the walls one day, victorious, to marry a beautiful girl and have a basketful of ragrats, or whatever happy story got her enough money, hoping to bank on what she thought might be the Commander’s own wishes.

But he found now a fissure cracking open inside him, and maybe it had been incrementally opening for a long time, and anger started to spill out, hot and caustic. The thought was utterly distasteful, everyone’s fucking obsession with Erwin’s death. It lingered in his mouth all bitter like tea leaves left too long to stew. Unpalatable. He saw it in their stares, heard it in their whispers, their eyes everywhere following and waiting like Erwin’s death was the natural order of things. Some prayed for it, begged the empty stone faces hanging on the walls to rid the world of the unclean.

Fuck them.

He’d never tell Erwin, but fuck them. Sometimes he thought about letting the damn titans eat a few, see how they liked the sight of humans pulverized and shredded and crushed between monstrous teeth, and later, bodies clumped together in bizarre mounds vomited back out again. He wanted to grab hold of the face of every fat cat in Sina and force them to watch. See? This is hell, he would tell them. And that man the only thing that stands between you.

He’d never do it, but sometimes he thought about it. Erwin would probably be horrified. Best not let him see the darkness swimming in Levi’s vision.

A strong gust of wind hit them again just then, a blow that sent the branches around them shaking wildly, followed by a bone-knocking clap of thunder. Levi jerked suddenly, head snapping in the titans’ direction like a whip, for one moment thinking an errant hand had caused it, an Aberrant jumping. Erwin’s arms tightened around his waist and Levi’s heart jumped in his throat.

The reality of their predicament congealed, took form and came down on Levi like a bucket of ice cold water. Here, now, death was more than possibility, more than abstract thought fed to the mind to tease out a response. There was nothing about the solidity of Erwin around him that was permanent. Even right now a hand could descend from the heavens and snatch him right out of Levi’s grasp. His hands on Erwin’s arms twitched at the thought, muscles contracting involuntarily, squeezing to keep hold like the dead limbs Hanji shocked with sparks.

When he looked, there was worry stirring in Erwin’s eyes, maybe the beginnings of fear. His eyes looked far away, hardened and narrowed in focus, someplace Levi could not see. So Levi turned to what he could see; took in the profile, the birdlike curve of his nose, the sharp angle of his cheekbones that like his lips were flushed and chapped from the cold, the square hardness of his jaw. Water had softened his hair and weighed it down. This man, who had surpassed all expectations, who had survived longer than anyone before him, marching ever forward with not a backward glance, this man of stone -- this devil of a man. He would cut them all down before he let them touch him.

The sky grumbled in the distance as if it heard him, coming down to challenge his vow with a roar. Levi felt it all around him, all the way in his molars like he’d been swallowed whole by a gargantuan predator. Something gnawed the walls of Levi’s own chest. “Did you believe her?” he asked softly, and scarcely heard himself over the wind.

Thought Erwin didn’t hear him until he spoke. “What?”

Levi shrugged. “It was just a bunch of shit.” he said, taking a step back and reaching behind him to untwine Erwin’s arms. The air was twice as cold as before. Erwin’s arms had been heavy on his waist. Warm. The man was a damn furnace, how did he keep burning like this? Would he run out of fuel? Levi didn’t want to know. He felt airy now, empty; Erwin’s arms had been stones and now he’d flutter away in the wind.

Erwin followed him. “Levi.”

He didn’t want to look at the other man now -- he felt too close suddenly. Erwin would see, with that creepy gaze of his that was like he was the psychic one. He needed more space between them. He needed more space than the grabby trees provided. “What?”

“You know that for us death is by far the safest prediction.” Which wasn’t wrong. Levi wasn’t stupid. There were three things Survey soldiers knew with certainty: the sun will rise; the titans will come; all men will die.

But now Levi bristled. If he were a cat he’d be hissing. “This fucking rain,” he exclaimed, flicking water off his hands.

“Seems like the reinsman was right,” Erwin said out of nowhere. “His lower lid had been twitching.” he explained as if this was all very amusing, a party trick.

“I have no interest in your shit predictions, Erwin.”

And Erwin’s put-on smile slid off his face, just like that, a gelatinous slip, falling right off.

“Said my life line was long actually.” Levi continued, looking down at his own palm. But it didn’t look long to him now, seemed the same as any blood stained hand he had ever held. Intersecting lines from the cold, from knife and sword, from the roughness of their world. “Longest she’d seen or something. Can you believe that horseshit?”

Erwin’s own heavy hand came down on his shoulder to squeeze. “I could have told you that," he chuckled, whisper soft, as he moved past Levi to survey the space ahead. “Out of the two of us, I think you were the one actually ripped off, Levi.”

It looked to Levi like he was readying to jump, just as at their backs daylight was bleeding out.

“I do believe you will outlive us all, Levi.” said Erwin over his shoulder, body poised for flight. “I would very much like that.” And an old smile broke over his lips at that whose authenticity Levi did not doubt.

And there, as Erwin smiled and what was left of daylight died, Erwin’s words hit him with such force that an Aberrant might as well have done it. It was strange, Levi thought, how the mind sifted through decades like they were seconds, forming shapes and making faces out shadows. And of all the things to come out of the murk, it was an experiment Hanji had shown him once, involving a candle, glass and a bowl of water, that he recalled now. She’d filled the bowl, lit the candle in its center, and covered it with a glass to trap the heat in. They’d both watched as water was sucked up into the glass at once, like magic. And that’s what it felt like in his head now, he thought. A great suction that stunned him, a great rushing sound that left him dizzy and disoriented.

Maybe it was the fragmentary moment during which his mind played Erwin’s words out, gave Levi a true taste of the desolation they suggested; maybe he too saw something of the future, a fraction of a moment that he couldn’t even properly recall now, but the terror of which remained.

Levi moved with the speed he was known for, reaching over to grab Erwin by his shoulder straps, and had him pushed against the trunk all in a single flash of lightning. Erwin to his credit, did not move. Did not speak. He stilled, but Levi saw the clench in his jaw, a sign that he was trying to rein in the words that clamored for freedom. Trying to find the right ones, even now, even as Levi could be readying to slit his throat.

Levi’s eyes on him were wide, bright with accusation, even if a little unfocused. “You don’t know me at all, do you?” he spat and his voice would have cracked next if he didn’t stop to swallow. Stop to look down.

“Give me your gear.”

Erwin’s voice from above was soft. “Do you have so little faith in me?”  
  
“I don’t have time for this, Erwin.”  
  
“What are you going to do? Hack at their ankles with your likely fractured ribs?”  
  
“My job.”  
  
“I didn’t give you one.” Erwin said, reminding Levi of their stations without really doing so. And there was the firmness Erwin was known for, Levi thought. The unmovable mountain. On its face, Erwin had gone down and the Commander had risen.

“Then maybe you should hurry up and do it before you croak, old man”

Erwin pushed forward then, bodily, and of course Levi could never contain him. Erwin was like the wind -- he’ll knock you down and you’ll never trap him. ”What is really the matter, Levi?”

Thunderous footsteps in the distance, getting closer. That was the matter.

“Give me your gear, Erwin.” These, the only words he could find in himself. “Give it to me.”

He moved then; trembling hands grabbed the straps at Erwin’s chest and pulled forcefully, looking to undo them right there on the tree, leave Erwin defenseless. No, not defenseless, Levi would be the shield. And sword. Levi would jump into a titan’s mouth himself if need be, and still he’d cut up the neck from the inside.

But Erwin’s hand came up to cover one of his entirely. “Levi,” he said. Just a single word. Question and command at once. Levi. Stop. Levi. Go. And when no one was left to wind them up, what became of tin soldiers? Rust. Dust. Disintegration. Obliteration.

His fingers curled, turned to claws round Erwin’s straps. “Please. Just let me do it” he pleaded, head dropping forward against Erwin’s chest. “I will kill them, I swear it. I can do this.” He hardly even felt the pain in his chest, just a tightness, and hadn’t that always been there? Hadn’t it always felt so in Erwin’s presence? It was nothing. Nothing at all. He was the fastest, the strongest.

His hand shook under Erwin’s, and when he finally lifted his head up to look him in the eye, he found the man’s face much closer to his own than he had anticipated. He breathed in and it was Erwin’s breath swirling between them in plumes of white. Another arm wrapped round his waist. He didn’t move. He didn’t look away. And Erwin’s face came closer still, until their foreheads touched in the way of cats.

The hand over Levi’s own squeezed tight to halt the shaking. He had the feeling that Erwin had understood somehow, had seen and parsed out the meaning from the incoherency of Levi’s words. And he nodded without breaking connection between the two of them. His eyes were dark this close up, like water being sucked into a black hole, a big ass sinkhole ready to swallow them straight to hell.

“Please.” Levi begged.

Then Erwin’s hand left his and moved downward to undo the straps himself. He was deliberate, methodical, making no sound as he started to take off Levi’s gear piece by piece. Erwin’s hands on his back to unclasp the dented barrel there; then skirting down his thighs to detach the scabbards. He felt those hands everywhere, pulling at his chest straps, up his back, falling softly to his sides, fingers trailing lightly.

When he’d taken off Levi’s broken parts, he turned those massive hands on his own body. Levi expected to be handed the parts one by one, but Erwin leaned in and affixed them himself. Erwin’s arms caged him in again as he attached his own barrel at the small of Levi’s back. He shuddered. He could hardly breathe.  
  
Then Erwin lowered himself before him, head so close Levi saw wet tendrils of his blond hair stick to his riding pants at the juncture of thigh and crotch. But Erwin didn’t speak, didn’t even look up. He went on to attach canisters and scabbards, making sure none of it would fail Levi in the battlefield. Overcome, Levi could only stare dumbly.  
  
When he was finally dressed for battle in Erwin’s armor, he looked to the titans that were now gathering close to the tree line, and unsheathed his blades. The hand grips were a little awkward, made for a larger hand than his.

Soon, a smiling four-meter was directly under him, fat hands reaching up in mockery of a child asking to be held. Levi steeled himself.

Before jumping, with his back to Erwin, he stopped. He looked at Erwin over his shoulder as if to memorize him, his touch, his eyes, the sight of him in the twilight. “If you went down his gullet,” he said, indicating to the titan below, “I wouldn’t be here. I would be there with you.”

He spared a mere second to watch his words sink in and see Erwin’s eyes go wide, then bright.

Then he flew.

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write fluffy Eruri sitting in a tree, but then I accidentally knocked a cup of angst all over it. Sorry guys. One day. 
> 
> Thanks for stopping by!


End file.
